Calculating a fossil’s position throughout geological history is a complex process. In palaeontology and other disciplines, determining a location in the past is quite a challenge that requires refined computational tools to process large volumes of data. Now, the BIOST3 Research Group at the University of Barcelona has designed an open-access web interface for the general public that simplifies this process and facilitates access to high-quality palaeogeographic reconstructions. This innovative tool, the Paleocoordinates Calculator (PACA), will help to overcome the technological barrier to facilitate access to high-quality paleogeographic reconstructions.

This powerful and accessible tool for palaeogeographic research and education is now presented in an article in the journal Scientific Reports. The authors are experts Noa Scholz-Murcia, Alejandro Rodríguez-Mena, Víctor Madarnás-Gómez and Antonio Monleón-Getino, from the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics at the UB’s Faculty of Biology.

Open and reproducible science

The ambition to map and understand the Earth’s geography has driven major technological revolutions that have enabled the current precision of cartography. Traditional tectonic reconstruction software usually requires programming skills or the use of complex programmes.

PACA helps to explore the Earth’s ancient geography and transforms current positions into palaeocoordinates using state-of-the-art plate tectonics models.

“This innovative interface removes methodological barriers: you simply upload a CSV file containing the current coordinates and the geological age of the find to obtain the exact paleocoordinates in seconds,” explains Professor Antonio Monleón-Getino, head of the BIOST3 Research Group and member of the Bioinformatics Barcelona (BIB) platform.

In line with the principles of open science, both the PACA source code and the 3D conversion scripts are publicly available on the Zenodo repository. The new tool developed by BIOST3 offers an efficient way to process large volumes of data and also actively promotes transparency and reproducibility in the Earth sciences. Through PACA, any researcher or user, regardless of their computing background, will be able to trace locations back through geological time.

A bridge between code and 3D visualization

The mathematical core of PACA is based on the R package palaeoverse, which connects directly to the GPlates web service. “The tool allows users to compare their data simultaneously with up to five global plate models (GPM) widely used by the scientific community: PALEOMAP, GOLONKA, MERDITH2021, TorsvikCocks2017 and MATTHEWS2016_pmag_ref,” explains Noa Scholz-Murcia, first author of the article and a member of the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) at the UB.

From paleocoordinates to the interactive viewer

In addition to providing the reconstructed palaeocoordinates, PACA automatically calculates variability between models. It generates metrics such as the palaeolatitudinal range and the maximum geographical distance in kilometres between the predictions of the different models. This allows researchers to immediately assess the degree of tectonic uncertainty in the study area.

The interface can export the optimized tables for statistical analyses, and features an interactive 3D viewer developed with React and Blender. This module projects the calculated points directly onto the palaeogeographic maps of the prestigious PALEOMAP Project, created by geographer Christopher Scotese and adapted to the International Chronostratigraphic Table.

Maximum precision without installation requirements

However, does replacing the desktop software affect accuracy? “Absolutely not,” says the BIOST3 team, which carried out a cross-validation with 142 reconstructions distributed globally.

The results demonstrated an almost perfect mathematical equivalence with the traditional GPlates workflow: an average spatial error of less than 17 metres, an insignificantly small distance on a planetary scale, a concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) of 1,000 across all models, and no evidence of systematic biases in the automated processing.

The PACA interface was designed as part of the research project “Cretaceous Resin Interval. Abiotic and biotic causes and their palaeoecological implications (CREI)”, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and coordinated by experts Antonio Monleón-Getino and Xavier Delclòs, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the IRBio. The CREI project studies the massive production of resin during a Cretaceous period that allowed the formation of many fossil resin deposits known today as amber.